Monday, November 26, 2007

Cabbage white # 2

This is the other poem and photos I sent to qarrtsiluni. I think they made the right choice; the anthropomorphism in this one is a bit strained, and it's not without sentimentalism and cliché. Also it lacks the distinguishing element of the chrysalids being on the wind turbines. But I'm sort of fond of it.

*******************

- Why did you go?

- It was necessary.

- Where are you?

- Here. Or there. Or nowhere.

- What are you?

- What I am. What I was. What I will be. I am growth and hunger, I am binding and parting. I am a mush and yellow deliquescence in a silk shroud. I am becoming.

- Come back. To the satisfying of the soft and hungry mouth, the suckered, hugging, undulating feet, the rolling intimacy between the veins of the leaves, the fat and juiciness of green, the ease and sweetness that we had all summer.Come back to me.

- I can't. There is, it seems, more.

- What more could there be?

- Perhaps a morning burst of dandelions and daisies, a heady afternoon of marjoram in flower. A deep epiphany of buddleia and savage sunset of mad marigold. The clinging golden dust of pollen and evanescent pearl of black edged silvery wings. A flying crooked dance of love against blue skies, then the dim-remembered pungency of brassica leaves, calling us down to lay and lay in ovipository, eviscerating ecstasy...Then perhaps an ending, by the bird's beak, or treachery of cobwebs in the corner of a window, or finally the first fall of brittle frost and nothingness.